A DARK new drama explores the psychopathic tendencies of a seemingly normal teenage boy.

New four-part Channel 4 drama Born To Kill can be summed up by adjectives beginning with “d”: dark, deeply disconcerting and downright disturbing.

Written by Tracey Malone (Rillington Place) and award-winning actress Kate Ashfield, Born To Kill is a troubling examination of the mind of Sam (newcomer Jack Rowan). Living in the nondescript commuter town of Ripley Heath, he is a schoolboy who is on the edge of enacting his secret psychopathic instincts.

Having endured various childhood traumas, Sam lives with his anxious mother Jenny (Romola Garai, The Hour), a nurse. He has no clear memories of his early life, but he has always been told that his father died in a car crash.

Related articles

During the course of her work at the local hospital, Jenny meets the amiable Bill (Daniel Mays, Line Of Duty), who is newly arrived in town with his difficult teenage daughter Chrissy (Lara Peake).

As Jenny and Bill begin to discover a mutual spark, their children meet at school and also hit it off. Sam thinks he has finally found someone he can relate to, but does she also nurture a yearning to murder? The series probes a human’s darkest desires and explores the vexed question: are people raised to be psychopaths or are they simply born to kill?

Daniel, 39, reveals he was drawn to this challenging story because he found it so compulsive.

The best TV for 2017

Mon, November 13, 2017

Gunpowder, The Crown, Stranger Things and Peaky Blinders. Here's the best TV coming your way in 2017.

“The power of Born To Kill is that Sam is succumbing to psychopathic tendencies, but that plays out against a domestic setting,” he says. “Ripley Heath could be any small town in any part of the country. So that contrast is what is compelling about this piece.”

Kate, 44, who first made her name as an actress in Late Night Shopping, This Little Life and Shaun Of The Dead, says, “He’s a schoolboy who would be undetected as he went about his daily life.

To all intents and purposes, Sam looks pleasant enough. For instance, he helps a boy on the bus who is being bullied. But everything Sam does is for his own ends. For him, it’s all a game.”

With Sam’s condition initially going undetected, Born To Kill may cause parents to reflect on how much they know their own children. Kate muses, “There are lots of questions you ask yourself as a parent. My son is 13 and he’s got a mobile phone, but I don’t police it. You have to have trust. But when, as a parent, do you seriously start worrying about what’s going on?”

But it would be monotonous if Sam were simply portrayed as irredeemably evil. While it is hard to find empathy for a character who has no empathy for others, Jack says he tried to reflect Sam’s ambiguity.

“He’s a complex character and those are the sort I’d rather play any day. There are a lot of moments in the script where Sam is cold. But I’d also be trying to find moments where he is relatable or likeable or flirtatious or attractive, so the people watching can connect with him.”

Daniel expands, “Even if you’re playing characters as dark as Sam, it’s always the job of the actor to humanise them as much as you can.”

But the question still remains of whether Sam could ever have been anything different.

Kate observes, “Sam wants to feel, but it’s beyond his reach. Psychopaths are afflicted by boredom and a constant lack of stimulation, so they try to stimulate themselves. Sam tries to do that through his relationship with Chrissy.

“We hope he will find someone to connect to and that might overtake his compulsions. We hope he and Chrissy might have a good time together, instead of him wanting to do something else…”